IN PERSON: PAUL TAYLOR
OFF THE BACK OF A VAN…
Merchant racking and storage specialist Filstorage celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. MD Paul Taylor talks to BMJ about the changes he’s seen.
O
ver the past three decades, Filstorage Ltd has become synonymous with racking, supplying the majority of the UK’s
top builders’ merchants.
And with the addition of CAD skills, trade counter, shop, warehouse and yard design have become an integral part of the Yorkshire company’s offering, enabling it to provide turnkey solutions for creating entirely new depots, or fully renovating existing ones. It has been an exciting journey for Paul Taylor – an original partner of the business and the current managing director. He recalls the roots of Filstorage, which can be traced to the chance purchase of a clearance line from a leading supermarket chain. “My brother-in-law, Steve Ross-Smith, saw this particular supermarket chain was clearing out some steel stillages following an accident at one of their stores. They were selling them at £2 each. His entrepreneurial spirit kicked in and he took one to his local garden centre and sold it for a £5 for them to sell as an incinerator.
“Before he knew it they were asking for more, so he started collecting from the supermarkets and selling them to local garden centres.”
Ross-Smith realised there was a market for the stillages in the builders’ merchant industry for storing plastic fittings. Not only this, merchants would buy in the hundreds rather than ones or twos as the garden centres did. “At this point Steve decided to bring me in,” says Taylor.
“We set up a company – SRS Storage – and I was despatched to the supermarket HQ to
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www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net June 2023
negotiate a deal to buy the entire remaining stock of 70,000.
“Luckily for us, they were happy for us to clear one depot at a time, and so started my white van man days. If a branch in, say, Leicester needed clearing of stock, I would go and collect 20 baskets and hawk them round every builders’ merchant in the town, taking orders as I went.
“Steve and his crew would follow a couple of days later in a lorry, clear the store and deliver the orders I had taken.” Around this time a lot of advertising was done via the ‘Builder’s Merchant Jumbo Card’ – a pack of cards sent through the post displaying adverts from individual suppliers.
Taylor and Ross-Smith decided to promote the cages this way and could not believe the response it generated – scores of merchants got in touch.
Kent company Wilson Storage was another storage business advertising in the cards, selling storage units for plastic fittings, prompting a rivalry between the two businesses. Taylor says: “It came to a head when I took a 500 units order from Kent Blaxill, who preferred us to Wilson. Because of this, John Jones from Wilson Storage approached us to buy us out, which was great timing as we were getting to the end of the 70,000 cages.
“At this point Steve decided to take his
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